Time’s Mark Halperin doubled down Wednesday on his view that the Affordable Care Act will produce the effect of rationing, although he insists it does not contain so-called “death panels.”
“I’ll say here again what I tried to say on Twitter yesterday,” Halperin said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I didn’t use the phrase ‘death panels,’ and I don’t think there are ‘death panels’ in the Affordable Care Act.”
The co-author of the recent book “Double Down” was referring to a Monday interview with Newsmax, in which he seemed to agree with host Steve Malzberg’s assertion that there would be rationing, or “death panels,” contained in the law. He later clarified his comments on Twitter.
“But what there is — the point I was trying to make and which I did make, what there is in the law is something that is intended to lower health care costs, which will produce rationing, whether you think rationing is a good idea or bad idea,” Halperin continued.
Steve Rattner, the Obama administration’s former “car czar,” pushed back against that argument. He said the law was changed to prevent the restriction of access to health care specifically because former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin raised the specter of “death panels.”
“They say that,” Halperin responded. “The way markets work is if you start to really restrict payments to providers, it’s going to have an impact on patients. It just will.”
Watch the segment below, courtesy of MSNBC:
This post has been updated.
